MX6450 for $1099 or MX6425 for $899 ?

Best Buy is selling the MX6450 for $1199, but I spoke to the manager and he said he would take $100 off to try to compete with Circuit City's offer of an MX 6425 for $899 (after rebates.)

The only differences in the MX6450 over the MX6425 that I can see are the following:

Better battery - 8 cell battery vs. 6 cell battery in the MX6425, supposedly 30% more time

Faster processor - Turion ML-37 (2.0 GHz) vs. Turion ML-34 (1.8 GHz) in the MX6425, 200 more MHz

Platinum Edition Styling - polished look to computer, not flat black

Operating system - Windows Media Center vs. Windows XP Home

So my basic question is that is all the above worth an extra $200? Any input would be greatly appreciated!

Here are the specs on the individual mancines if you are interested:
http://www.gateway.com/home/products/ret/ret_mx6450.shtml
http://www.gateway.com/home/products/ret/ret_mx6425.shtml

 

Actually, this week the platinum edition comes with two things for 1199. You get a basic security setup. That means you get norton or pc-cillin, and spysweeper-- installed by geeksquad and you get the disks. thats like an 84 dollar value. You ALSO get a in home wireless setup. Thats worth 159$ and means that a double agent drives the bug to your house, sets up yor router with two computers for file and printer sharing, and he secures the network. basically you get almost 250$ in services. 1199 is a great price for all that. Get the one at Best Buy, pay 1199, and enjoy all those goodies.

 

Do you have a link to the site that shows you all this? The networking stuff I already have set-up, but the free software sounds good.

Mjolnier

 

Its not online as i can tell but its in the ad this week. the notebook has a whole page and tells you what you get. Where are you from?

 

I'm in Massachusetts, I don't recall seeing it in the ad but I'll look again. But even without the software you think it's worth it? I havn't seen any other notebooks that have as good a deal as that at CompUSA, Circuit City or BestBuy. If the dual-core chips are coming soon, I may wait, but don't know when they are coming.

mjolnier

 

Thats a great deal, but socket AM2 will come out in Q2 or 3 this year, Turion dual core... shouldbe very impressive. The Core due is also a nice performer... battery life doesnt seem to be impressive, but performance is nice (no 64 bit though)

 

I ended up getting the MX6450 for $1049, they had an open box unit that looked fine. The nice thing about buying an open box at Best Buy is that they don't charge you the restocking fee since it was already an open box. So in the end I got it for $150 off the sticker price.

Mjolnier

 

Cool let us know how you like it and what kind of battery life you get under different conditions, etc. Looks like a great notebook to me!

 

I think you'll like the 6450. I own the 6424 and aside from the period key not working perfectly (it seems a little flimsier than the rest of the keys) it runs well. Personally, I don't know if I'm sold on the glossy screen, viewing angle is quite narrow. Battery life is under 3 hours, normal usage.

I would say the speed of the hard drive was a pleasant surprise. Even though it's only 4200RPM it's pretty quick. The computer is also very quiet, fan comes on every once in a while but I hardly notice it. I've even taken apart the bottom and the processor could very well be upgradeable.:gateway:

Overall a nice package.

 

I own the 6450 and it is a great laptop. I think you will enjoy it very much. I also noticed that Gateway has posted all of the Hardware Drivers for this unit on thier website : http://support.gateway.com/support/drivers/mydl.asp?tab=MY&os=Windows XP

The screen is out of this world...

 

im just typing in my MX6450... is **** cool, it only has a problem, playing at MAX volume makes the volume pop off/on sometimes, but problem dissapear if you take away 2 of 3 bars of the sound, by the way, i bought my MX6450 Platimun edition for $950, hehehe, just at the moment i asked about the MX6450, it came price down!!! hehehe, gateway only did like a thousand MX6450, so quickly go and check if there are any available.
(hehehe, srry for any mistakes, english is not the language i use)

bass09